


A People Person

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [26]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: The thoughts of a girl made out of broken glass.
Relationships: Emma Barnes & Madison Clements, Emma Barnes & Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker, Emma Barnes/Sophia Hess | Shadow Stalker
Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435474
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	A People Person

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [confessions of an emotional vampire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4615347) by [Dandybear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear). 



> Heavily inspired by confessions of an emotional vampire, just by the way. God I love that one-shot.

**3.** the shadow (beneath her feet)

Sophia is a thing of extremes, never letting herself be anything but the most. She is reckless and loud, violent and helpful, she is both and neither.

She is disobedience, with a capital D. She is broken families and fulfilled responsibilities, she is wrong and she is right, not that she knows it.

She is dangerous and yet safe, she is broken and yet whole.

Sophia is a dead end, and Emma knows it. Because there _is_ no good ending, not with her, not with the gentle downward spiral Sophia has been in since she first got her powers. Emma can see the signs, it’s not difficult, it’s the craze behind her eyes, it’s the little tests she gives people, it’s the way consequences stopped meaning something to her years ago.

Sophia is empowerment, in a way. Fucked up and rotten, rough and blistering. Her fingerprints are everywhere, hiding beneath the hem of her jacket, the slope of her neck, biting into her skin, pulling at her hair. She is every dime-novel fantasy forced into a little girl too small to hold it all, ripping at the seams and letting something important leak out. Dark and brooding, dominant and ‘alpha’; all the little buzz-words, the little things middle-aged white women need when their husbands come up inadequate.

But, then, Sophia is going to go nowhere. Sophia was born in Brockton and she’ll die in it, probably in the same way she came into it: crying and sobbing in the back of a van. She has no future, not in this world, not when all of that anger and energy went to a person whose power couldn’t channel it. Like it, Sophia is intangible, transitory; a breeze of negativity that has no real lasting impact.

Sophia is, after all, just a fantasy.

**2.** the empty girl (who just can't help herself)

Madison is fun where Sophia isn’t, and deficient where Sophia is.

She is a comparison, Emma thinks, because that’s the only way you can really look at her. She fools most people with it, a girl too-savvy with how to fit in, slotting into niches yet unfilled.

She is dishonest, a liar, and Emma doesn’t blame her for it. Madison is anything you want her to be, in any place, so long as she can remain with you. She is neediness, a symbiotic parasite, difficult to cherish because she is nothing and yet everything she makes herself out to be.

What personality she has, the person she is beneath layers of masks, is average, boring, and inadequate. Madison is the echo in her family’s empty summer home, she is the sound of laughter, forced out from between clenched teeth.

She is fun, but only when she’s pushed to her extremes.

Emma made it a game, half escalated so far just to see if Madison would play along, if she could keep up the charade of being one of the girls for each new step towards unforgivable sin. She smiled through it all, just like she was taught, just like she learned.

Madison is peer pressure, turned into a person. An amalgam, a dress. She is worn by others, conforms to them, stretches herself every which way, just to please.

Madison is pointlessness, she is for long nights painting nails, pointless thoughts, and admitting just how empty you are to another person, just to see if they twitch.

Madison is hollow, carved out by life’s expectations and left out on the curb. “Come”, her sign would say, “wear me, breathe me, let me be something other than trash”.

**1.** the innocent one (who everyone likes to hurt)

Taylor is like wet concrete: soft, heavy, grey and impressionable; the sort of thing people doodle their initials in.

She is a girl primed to be hurt, ready and almost eager. The world might’ve set her up to fail, but Taylor helped it across the finishing line anyways. She gives grudges not to people, but to the cars they used to kill her mother; she spends time not hating, but wondering why she is hated. There is an innocence in her that is unchanging, purity retained because at some point she buried it beneath the tree in the back yard.

She is Emma’s biggest mistake.

Taylor is addictive, a drug. She’s the sort of thing you want to reach out and mark, to drag your fingers through. She’s wet paint with all the personality of someone who enjoys watching it dry. She’s childhood attachments, the teddy bear someone’s parents put away years before, dragged out in the wake of something awful, igniting old urges, older thoughts. She is a friend, until she isn’t.

She is for first kisses, shared behind a junior high, hasty and never spoken of again. She’s for holding hands and giggling, she’s the easy route, the one without thorns or uncomfortable questions. She is selective ignorance, beaten into the rough approximation of a person; hereditary, if her father is any indication.

Taylor is easy when the world at large is hard; she is ignorance when the world is knowledge. She is a canvas with untouched paints, every part of her, body, mind and soul, bared and barren, ready to be marked, for other people to leave their marks, if nothing else because they want to be remembered.

She takes everything to heart, every last knife, every exploratory touch, every shove, every kick, every cruel word and every rebuke. She is a perfectionist built from the puzzle pieces of criticism, little joints mutilated to lock together. She shouldn’t exist, not in this world, not in one with powers and monsters, only a few of which aren’t Human.

She is what other people made of her, what Emma made of her. She is a painting, in the end, and no matter how many other people are lured to reach out, to touch and mar and scribble, all they can do is draw over what came before. She is broken in, comfortable, reliable.

Until she isn’t.


End file.
